Currently, you can do a lot of stuff with your "agents" (BOTS) and it seems a lot nicer that using manual labor in your daily crypto routine but are those really the products that are going to scale the crypto UI/UX?
Using the current state of the Agents is still very funny and it can give a glimpse of the future when they evolve to a cross-communication and interaction between them!
This article does NOT suggest that the projects don't deserve credit for what they've built.
This is a small comparisson table with differences between BOTS & Agents:
Capability | Bots | AI Agents (Crypto-native) |
|---|---|---|
Execution | Yes | Yes |
Reasoning | No | Yes |
Learning | No | Yes |
Identity / Wallet | Sometimes | Always |
Verifiable Actions | Rare | Core feature |
Example | Unibot, Clanker, Bankr | AgentKit, Ritual Agents |
There are few examples that are still very useful and people are using in regularly - Clanker, Bankr, Unibot
Although Clanker is crushing it on protocol generated fees ~ 40M with daily fees around 200k, if the direction of the token/protocol does not evolve that will be pointless and if the demand of new tokens disapear the protocol will become useless.
Bankr is something else - Trading bot with features explained below:
They still lack few very important atributes - TRUST, Verifiability, Autonomy
Until now, the Internet has mainly connected people. The next evolution will connect AI agents —autonomous programs that act on behalf of users, companies, and communities.
For this new network of intelligent agents to function smoothly, they need ways to find each other and trust each other’s actions.
Frameworks like MCP and A2A make it possible for agents to communicate, but they still don’t solve two foundational problems needed for truly open, interoperable agent economies:
Discovery — understanding which agents exist and what they can do.
Trust — verifying that an agent is genuine and reliable.
Feature | Bot | AI Agent |
|---|---|---|
Reactivity | High | High |
Autonomy | Low | High |
Intelligence | Scripted | Adaptive |
Crypto Wallet | Optional | Core identity |
Verifiability | Rare | Expected |
Examples | BanKr, Clanker, Unibot | Ritual, Autonolas, AgentKit, AI-driven BanKr |
That's where the ERC-8004 is coming very handy!
Building Trust in AI Agent Ecosystems: A New Standard for Identity and Reputation
ERC-8004 introduces a novel approach to AI agent identification by leveraging the familiar ERC-721 NFT standard. Each AI agent receives a unique on-chain identity represented as a non-fungible token, making agents discoverable, transferable, and manageable through any wallet or NFT marketplace that supports the standard.
This tokenized identity links to a standardized registration file containing essential information about the agent—its capabilities, designated skills, and connection endpoints for various protocols including agent-to-agent communication (A2A), Model Context Protocol (MCP), and decentralized identifiers.
The power of this approach lies in its openness. By building on neutral, public infrastructure and adhering to open standards, the system enables any indexer, explorer, or marketplace to catalog and surface these agents without requiring permission from centralized gatekeepers. This creates a truly interoperable discovery layer that works seamlessly across different platforms and vendors.
You can mint, view in wallets, transfer, and manage them (including delegations to operators) using existing 721 infra & apps.
From Identity to Reputation
Beyond simple identification, ERC-8004 addresses one of the most critical challenges in autonomous agent economies: establishing trustworthy reputation systems. The standard implements an on-chain feedback mechanism where both human users and other agents can submit structured reviews tagged by specific skills or task categories. When transactions involve payments, the system can attach cryptographic payment proofs that tie economic activity to reputation scores, creating a verifiable track record of an agent's reliability and performance.
For situations requiring higher confidence, the standard incorporates a Validations Registry. This registry allows agents to voluntarily submit to various verification processes maintained by the community—such as Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) attestations, stake-backed inference validation, or zkML. The results of these validations become publicly auditable, providing additional layers of assurance for users evaluating potential agent partnerships.
Designed for Real-World Adoption
The architects of ERC-8004 prioritized practical implementation. Recognizing that transaction costs can create friction in feedback systems, the standard supports gasless interactions through EIP-7702's ign-and-relay mechanism, allowing users to submit reviews without paying gas fees. The architecture combines on-chain data storage for critical information with IPFS for supplementary content, striking a balance between decentralization and cost-efficiency while maintaining straightforward indexing capabilities.
A Complete Lifecycle for Agent Economies
Taken together, these components establish a comprehensive framework for how open AI agent marketplaces should function. The lifecycle flows naturally: users discover agents through decentralized indexes, evaluate them based on transparent reputation data, conduct transactions with cryptographic proof, verify capabilities through community validators, and contribute feedback that improves the ecosystem for everyone. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle where quality agents gain visibility and credibility while maintaining the permissionless, open nature that defines truly decentralized systems.
TL:DR
Choosing the Right Model
Each trust model offers a different balance of cost, speed, and assurance
Model | Ideal When | Guarantees | Trade-offs |
|---|---|---|---|
Reputation | Low-risk, fast-moving, partial disclosure | Social validation | Weak recourse |
TEE-Based | Privacy + verifiability required | Hardware-attested integrity | Hardware trust assumptions |
Stake-Secured | High-value, critical systems | Economic accountability | Higher capital + latency |
A bit more info on that:
ERC-8004 v1, co-authored with @DavideCrapis (@Ethereumfndn), @Jordan0Ellis (@Google) and - welcome Erik! - @programmer (@Coinbase) is now
What kind of Agents could become possible with ERC-8004?
Marco De Rossi gave pretty good idea what Agents could spawn from this innovation here:
https://medium.com/survival-tech/trustless-agents-in-real-life-debc10a0db37
I'll add a bit more in this table :)
# | Agent Type | 8004 Trust Model | Core Function |
|---|---|---|---|
1 | Legal Agent | TEE-based | Confidential contract review |
2 | Energy Agent | Stake-Secured | Manage and trade renewable output |
3 | Supply Chain Agent | Hybrid | Verify logistics + preserve trade secrecy |
4 | Research Agent | Reputation | Peer-driven scientific exploration |
5 | Media Agent | Reputation | Curate verified, bias-checked content |
6 | Real Estate Agent | Stake-Secured | Automate high-value property deals |
7 | Education Agent | Hybrid | Private tutoring + verifiable transcripts |
8 | Security Agent | Stake-Secured | Active defense and verification |
So one of the key component will be verification for those AI Agents which could be filled by EigenCloud!
With recently added products EigenCompute and EigenAI this seems to be a very useful set up for AI Agents!
EigenCompute introduces a new class of software — verifiable applications — that can hold funds, sign transactions, and operate autonomously with cryptographic proof of their identity and behavior.
Traditional apps require blind trust in developers; smart contracts removed that trust but at the cost of flexibility and performance. EigenCompute bridges this gap — combining the verifiability of on-chain logic with the scalability of off-chain computation.
When deployed, each application receives:
Hardware-Isolated Execution: Runs inside Intel TDX enclaves that generate proofs of the exact Docker image operating inside.
A Dedicated Wallet: The app alone can access its private key, ensuring self-sovereign operation.
Secure Secret Management: Encrypted environment variables accessible only within the enclave.
On-Chain Deployment Record: Immutable logs of the app’s Docker digest for full auditability.
Network Connectivity: Optional HTTP/HTTPS endpoints for autonomous service interactions.
The result is a trustless compute layer where code can act as an independent agent — holding assets, making verifiable decisions, and interacting directly with users or other agents.
In essence, EigenCompute turns applications into cryptographically accountable entities, blending the openness of blockchain with the power of traditional cloud computing.
EigenAI allows developers to build verifiable AI-powered applications — systems that ensure every inference from a large language model (LLM) is deterministic, auditable, and tamper-proof.
Instead of relying on black-box APIs that might alter prompts, responses, or model parameters, EigenAI provides a trustable LLM interface compatible with the OpenAI API. Developers can integrate it directly into existing applications to guarantee that AI outputs remain consistent and verifiable across runs.
Mission:
AI is transforming how the world builds and thinks. EigenAI’s mission is to empower every developer to create scalable, transparent, and verifiable AI systems — so that trust becomes a built-in property of intelligence, not an afterthought.
Use Cases:
Prediction Market Agents: Agents that interpret real-world data and place or arbitrate market bets transparently.
Trading Agents: Consistent, reproducible financial reasoning with full assurance that prompts and responses are unaltered.
Verifiable AI Games: AI-driven characters and game logic whose fairness and behavior can be cryptographically proven.
AI Judges: Systems that can verifiably evaluate submissions for contests, governance decisions, or market resolutions.
In short, EigenAI brings verifiability, determinism, and trust to the world of AI inference — merging the reliability of cryptography with the creativity of machine intelligence.
It's all coming to the need of people to develope those applications. Soon the technology will mature with ERC-8004 and will be easier to create usable AI agents!
Hope that article hepls to clear the air around the dark clouds of information!